


The Seeker

by Belmont247



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, In case you can't tell I'm new here, Loki may or may not be dead, No more Asgard, Not happy dreams ahead, Poor Thor, what am i even supposed to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 02:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16714498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belmont247/pseuds/Belmont247
Summary: He knows this game. This time, he’s decided he won’t be fooled.





	The Seeker

He waits expectantly.

Patiently.

Quietly.

He knows this game. This time, he’s decided he won’t be fooled.

So he waits on mountaintops that remind him of the slopes he played upon as a child. He rests beneath the night skies of remote lands, filling his vision with cold scatterings of stars instead of the brightly splashed nebulae his heart yearns for, fixing what bards’ tales he can remember to foreign constellations.

He waits for those hints that he overlooked last time, the ones he didn’t know to look for the time before that, and if they’re slow in appearance, it’s because _he_ is being more careful this time.

He wanders and he waits and he _dreams_ dreams of golden paths and rainbow bridges and silver skies. In his dreams he walks beneath proud banners and among proud people and at every turn there is a shadow of a laugh and the glint of a smile, dancing a constant step ahead. In his dreams, he has no patience.

_Come now, brother. Keep up, would you?_

It’s a glorious day in his dreamscape, and his mind has recalled a beautiful, stonewalled courtyard lined with silver-leaved trees where many celebrations once took place. Thor pushes his way through a hazy crowd, full of indistinct bodies and senseless chatter drawn from the scattered and scarred memories of another lifetime. He jostles past faceless forms, one after another cheering in exuberance, in his chase after a familiar figure flickering at the edges of the crowd.

_I’ve got something absolutely grand to show you. Assuming, of course, that your feet aren’t as dense as the rest of you. _

He breaks from the crowd, nearly out of breath without reason, and looks about, searching.

_It’s not as though we have forever, Thor._

And there, between the noble trunks of two great trees at the southern end of the courtyard, a dash of green and gold catches his eye. Thor breaks into a light run as Loki leans into his sight, framed by the long shadows of well-manicured topiaries as he peers at Thor from behind a tree, but this is not his Loki. This is a memory _(So am I, you oaf. So am I)_ , the Loki of his childhood, eyes bright with innocent mischief and tousled hair curling at the ends. He grins widely before disappearing.

_You never could find me if I didn’t really wish to be found._

Thor’s run falls into a walk as he reaches the trees. He looks carefully for Loki, takes a step between the trees, and it is no longer day.

There is rough rock rather than clean stone beneath his boots, and the pinpoint lights of Midgardian stars shine down. He is surrounded by forest and though it sways with an unfelt breeze, there is an unsettling lack of sound. He turns as he recognizes the place, his boots scraping loudly in the silence. Once, he brought Loki here, and as he remembers the harsh words that were traded instead of words of joy for a brother returned from the dead, he sees Loki standing at the edge of the rock formation, dressed in formal leathers with his back to Thor.

His steps echo as he moves to stand at his brother’s right. Loki is studying the sky, his eyes glittering and his expression peaceful. Thor makes to say his name, to call his attention away from the distant stars, but no sound escapes. He cannot speak, so he reaches a desperate hand to Loki’s shoulder where it meets cold leather, too cold for the mildness of the night. Loki doesn’t stir.

He pulls at Loki and finds that he lacks the strength to budge him and Loki doesn’t so much as blink. Thor is near to panic, throwing the whole of his power into his efforts to jostle Loki back into the present, but Loki yet observes the stars, still as though he were a figure from one of their mother’s lost tapestries.

Hours, days, _weeks_ , they pass within seconds--Thor is fatigued and Loki is serene. A wave of despair crashes over Thor as grief wells from within, like an unhealing and ill-gotten wound, fresh and raw as the day it was received. In the boundaries of his own mind he’s brought to his knees, reduced to a child leveling curses at fate, throwing crude, angry thoughts at each of the realms and all of their peoples, at the stars dispassionately watching him fall apart, at his father, at Loki, _at himself_.

Tears blur his vision, and then rain does, too. The forest dances around him, trees whipping wildly, yet he feels no wind. He looks up to Loki and is momentarily startled when he finds Loki observing him detachedly. He’s turned only in the slightest, black hair plastered to his scalp and water running down his face like a torrent of tears. Thor is staring back almost hopefully with his knees still planted in the quickly developing mud when the sky is suddenly torn apart by a streak of lightning, momentarily casting Loki into a silhouette before Thor’s eyes close of their own accord. The heavens above break into a thunderous roar that seems to echo within his skull, and when he opens his eyes he sees that Loki is saying something but his ears are ringing and he can’t quite make out Loki’s words through the rain. Loki grins at him like he used to, before he fell _(before you didn’t catch me)_ , and Thor’s heart fractures a little more.

The sky explodes into searing light once again, and it steals with it all sound. His vision is an empty, white canvas, the muddied earth disappears from beneath his knees. His hands grasp wildy at nothing, blind and deaf and useless as some newly born beast. There is nothing and nobody, memories like black holes and faces of ghosts, a thousand regrets and Thor is still alone--

_I’m not quite sure why you listen to anything I say anymore, and neither, I suspect, are you._

Thor freezes at the only sound he hears, his desperation at a momentary halt. Loki sounds as though he is right in front of Thor, but when he reaches forward his fingers meet absolutely nothing and nobody--

_Really, Thor. You must know by now-- almost nothing I do is exactly what it appears to be, and nothing at all of what I say is what you think it means. _

The memories are _pulling_ at Thor--

_I don’t actually have anything to show you. Maybe I did, quite literally a lifetime or two ago, but now? Now, brother, I have nothing, and it seems you do, too._

Naught but the whisper of ghosts--

_You could spend your sleep on worthier memories, Thor._

A thousand regrets and more--

_Let me go._

Birdsong fills Thor’s hearing, and he wakes beneath a gnarled tree upon a mountaintop that reminds him of the slopes he played upon as a child.

 

He is still alone.


End file.
